Confederate flag's shadow touching S.C.'s sports world

Friday, February 18th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The Confederate flag over the Statehouse is casting its shadow across the playing fields of South Carolina. The Eastern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference cited the flag this week in moving its tournament to Florida. Several Northeast schools have canceled spring trips to Hilton Head Island.

But marquee events like the women's U.S. Olympic Marathon trials Feb. 26 and the Southern Conference basketball tournament are staying. Sponsors might issue statements saying the flag should come down, but the money and planning involved have so far won out over the NAACP's tourism boycott.

USA Track & Field said Monday that moving the trials would be a "great disruption" for the more than 200 qualifiers. The Southern Conference, which for weeks discussed compromise with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said it had signed contracts with Greenville's Bi-Lo Center for the March 2-5 tournament and could not easily find an available arena out of state. "There wasn't any other solution," John Block, Furman's vice president of intercollegiate athletics, said.

When the NAACP announced its boycott last summer, field director Nelson Rivers III said that in sports, the civil-rights group wanted to "make South Carolina the Arizona of this part of the decade." Arizona lost a Super Bowl in 1993 because it did not have a holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. While University of South Carolina sports administration professor Tom Regan said it's unlikely the big events would be canceled or moved, organizers must confront questions from competitors, fans and the media.

Craig Masback, executive director of USATF, said athletes and board members raised the issue. "We have a very divers emembership," he said. "We felt it was important to speak out."

Those who support the flag, which has flown over the Statehouse since 1962, say it honors Southern heritage. Opponents say it is a symbol of racism and slavery. State legislators, with the sole power to lower the banner, are struggling with what to do.

The Southern Conference presidents voted in November to write Gov. Jim Hodges asking that the flag come down. Commissioner AlfredWhite said the league would consider removing its 2001 tournament, also scheduled for the Bi-Lo, if the flag remained. South Carolina basketball coach Eddie Fogler is a flag opponent and Gamecocks football coach Lou Holtz stood alongside Hodges this week when the governor announced his plan to put the flag at a monument on Statehouse grounds. "It has had an affect on our recruiting," Holtz said.

Dwight James of the NAACP's South Carolina chapter said his group had succeeded in raising the issue in the sports world. "The flag touches many things," he said. Dr. Lonnie Randolph, who was leading the sanctioned effort for the NAACP, said that the boycott is forcing major sporting events to take notice. "It's always gratifying to see groups stand up and do what's right," he said.

The EIAC, with five of its seven NAIA schools in South Carolina, moved its March tournament from Claflin in Orangeburg to Edward Waters in Jacksonville, Fla. "This issue is not only an economic one but a moral imperative for us as educational leaders," Leonard Dawson, chairman of the league presidents' council, said.

Tennis teams from Temple, Haverford, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawrall canceled trips to Hilton Head. So did Bryn Mawr's lacrosse team. Still, football coaches at Wofford and Furman said the flag had little effect on their recruiting, and of Clemson's 14 football signees, 13 were black and seven came from out of state.

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said in November he didn't expect the flag controversy to spill over to April's MCI Classic at Harbour Town or November's Senior Tour Championship at Murrell's Inlet. And Serena Williams, the first black American to win a Grand Slam event since Althea Gibson more than 40 years ago, has committed to play at the Family Circle Cup tennis tournament on Hilton Head.

Russ Pate, race director for the women's marathon trials, thinks the Legislature is close to a resolution. But when national photographers stand on the finish-line photo bridge a week from Saturday, their long lenses will catch the Confederate flag snapping in the breeze on the Statehouse dome as the leaders run down Main Street. That, Pate said, could cost South Carolina in bidding for future events. "We need to go ahead and get this done," he said. "Our state is suffering."